![\"Logo](\"http:\/\/vqt.nlm.mybluehost.me\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/deadline-hollywood-logo-o-300x39.png\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMy only sin is in my skin.\u201d That rhyme is among the lyrics in the 1929 Fats Waller song \u201c(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,\u201d an eloquent and haunting evocation of the experience of being a Black man in America. <\/p>\n
The brilliant jazz artist and entertainer Louis Armstrong recorded a version of that song. More importantly, he lived it.<\/p>\n
Armstrong\u2019s private feelings about the racism and indignities he faced during his life are explored in the Apple Original Films documentary Louis Armstrong\u2019s Black & Blues, directed by Sacha Jenkins. The film draws from private audio recordings the jazz trumpeter made, including conversations with friends where he spoke openly about his experiences. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a techie, you could say, and he had a reel-to-reel recorder that he took with him everywhere, but also was prominently featured in his fun room at his house,\u201d Jenkins said during an appearance at Deadline\u2019s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-season event. \u201cHe taped conversations with himself and his wife, friends, conversations with himself. And it\u2019s very revealing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jenkins added, \u201cMedia back then wasn\u2019t what it is today. There [wasn\u2019t] YouTube or these platforms where artists can say whatever they want and do whatever they want. He was pretty forward-thinking in knowing that one day there would be great value to what he thought, and the media [of his time] wasn\u2019t really going to give him the platform to really share what he thought. So, it\u2019s an amazing wealth of material that is the spine, the backbone of the film.\u201d <\/p>\n
Through use of those recordings, the documentary dispels the illusion that somehow Armstrong was so cheerful by nature that he didn\u2019t feel wounded by open racism in the South, or thinly disguised racism elsewhere in the country, including Hollywood, where Armstrong made many films. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn many ways, the way that Louis has been depicted in the media has been that happy guy with lots of energy and charisma and befriending a lot of white people and performing in front of white audiences,\u201d said producer Julie Anderson. \u201cAnd what people don\u2019t understand is that Louis understood exactly where he was. He was existing somewhere between the Black and white world. And this is the \u201940s and \u201950s, surviving through \u201930s, Jim Crow.\u201d <\/p>\n
The tightrope Armstrong walked, not by choice but by necessity, comes through in Black & Blues. <\/p>\n
\u201cLouis was one of the very first Black performers to start performing worldwide \u2026 in front of white audiences \u2014 massive white audiences, not just small things,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cHe had a lot of responsibility being in that position as the first, and he knew that he had to behave in a certain way to make it all work. And I think that because of this one-dimensional presentation of Louis, people thought he was careless about the Black community, which was not true at all. He knew exactly where he came from.\u201d <\/p>\n
In one telling example, the film reveals that as Armstrong became more famous in the U.S., he insisted that anytime he performed at a hotel he would have the right to overnight accommodations in that establishment. Without that rider, he wouldn\u2019t have been permitted to rest himself in the very place where he had entertained. <\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, no one was looking at that action as a form of civil rights activism when in fact, it was,\u201d Jenkins observed. \u201cBut that\u2019s the great thing about having 50 years go by and some time, some breathing room, to really think about who he was and what he meant, what he means.\u201d <\/p>\n
Check out the panel video and view this article at Deadline<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Louis Armstrong\u2019s Black & Blues\u2019 Provides Truer, Fuller Picture Of An Entertainment Icon \u2013 Contenders Documentary: \u201cMy only sin is in my skin.\u201d That rhyme is among the lyrics in the 1929 Fats Waller song \u201c(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,\u201d an eloquent and haunting evocation of the experience of being
+ Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,23,63,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deadline","category-elsa-ramo","category-imagine","category-nicole-compas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5944,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions\/5944"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}